This past quarter, the Nevada Supreme Court adopted the “notice-prejudice” rule that prevails in many other jurisdictions and the California Courts of Appeal issued coverage decisions affecting a range of first and third party coverages. We hope our short case summaries are an easy reference for you and, as always, welcome any comments, questions or the opportunity to elaborate on any coverage question you or your group may have.
This newsletter covers the following topics:
If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact the editor, Scott A. Freedman, at 213.417.5317 or .
In the second quarter of 2011, California appellate courts again issued a relatively few number of insurance coverage decisions. We hope our brief summaries of them serve as an easy reference for you. As always, we welcome any comments, questions or the opportunity to elaborate on any coverage question you or your group may have.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact the editor, Scott A. Freedman, at 213.417.5317 or sfreedman@mpplaw.com.
In the last two quarters, California appellate courts issued a number of interesting decisions in the insurance coverage context. In Century-National v. Garcia, the Supreme Court concluded, in the first party context, that innocent insureds are entitled to coverage despite intentional acts of a co-insured. In the third party, construction context, Clarendon v. General Security gives insurers ammo with respect to the products-completed operations hazard, exclusions j(5) and j(6) and a "claims in progress" exclusion. We hope our brief summaries of these and all of the appellate coverage cases in this issue serve as an easy reference for you. As always, we welcome any comments, questions or the opportunity to elaborate on any coverage question you or your group may have.
We welcome you to our new employment e-newsletter. This newsletter will provide updates on employment law, as well as informative articles to assist you in managing your business. Morris Polich & Purdy LLP has 16 attorneys focusing on employment law issues in California and Nevada. If there is any information or assistance we can provide you, please do not hesitate to contact me or any of MPP’s employment attorneys. Likewise, if you have any comments on this newsletter or ideas for information you would like us to include in future newsletters, just let us know.If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact the editor, Scott A. Freedman, at 213.417.5317 or .
MESSAGE FROM THE EDITORDid you know that Morris Polich & Purdy LLP has over 100 published appellate decisions to its name, including some of the leading California cases on insurance law? As a member of both the firm’s Appellate Practice and Insurance Litigation groups, I hope you will consider our firm not only for insurance litigation but also for any appellate needs you may have in California, Nevada or elsewhere. We hope you find this quarter’s coverage case summaries informative and welcome your comments or questions. Mark Hellenkamp
California appellate courts issued coverage decisions in the second quarter of 2010 in a number of different substantive areas. We hope our brief case summaries serve as an easy reference for you. As always, we welcome any comments, questions or the opportunity to elaborate on any coverage question you or your group may have.
California appellate courts were relatively active in publishing coverage decisions in the first quarter of 2010. We hope you find our case summaries informative. As always, we welcome any comments, questions or the opportunity to elaborate on any coverage question you or your group may have.
California appellate courts published relatively few coverage opinions in the last quarter of 2009. The Nevada Supreme Court published one. I hope you find our summaries of them informative. In other news, please note that MPP has now opened a San Francisco office with six attorneys and growing, so you can now find us in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, San Francisco and Las Vegas. As always, we welcome any comments, questions or the opportunity to elaborate on any coverage question you or your group may have.
For those who handle claims involving occurrence based policies, you will probably find the California Supreme Court’s decision in Delgado v. Interinsurance Exchange the most notable coverage case of this past quarter. In Delgado, the Court distinguished the landmark duty to defend case of Gray v. Zurich based on the fact that Gray did not involve an “accident”-based occurrence definition. While Delgado is not a duty to defend case, it gives insurers clarification in cases where clearly intentional acts are cast as “negligence” to trigger insurance coverage. We hope you find our summaries of Delgado and other notable coverage cases informative. As always, we welcome any comments, questions or the opportunity to elaborate on any coverage question you or your group may have.
Of particular interest in this issue are cases addressing the qualified pollution exclusion, insurers’ duty of diligent inquiry upon notice of a claim, and a District Court opinion which concludes that under Nevada law there can be bad faith in the absence of coverage. We hope you find our case summaries informative and, as always, we welcome any comments, questions or the opportunity to elaborate on any coverage question you or your group may have.
In the last two quarters, our appellate courts have addressed a wide spectrum of coverage issues. We hope you find our brief summaries of them informative. In this issue, we also include an article pertaining to proofs of loss in first party cases which was prompted by a recent appellate decision that is currently unpublished. As always, we welcome any comments, questions or the opportunity to elaborate on any coverage question you or your group may have.
The third quarter of 2008 produced a modest number of published coverage decisions from the California appellate courts (and none from Nevada). Of particular interest is the Second District’s decision in Brehm v. Superior Court, which held that an auto insurer can face bad faith liability if it fails to make reasonable efforts to settle before demanding uninsured motorist arbitration. We would not be surprised if, in the future, insureds attempt to invoke this holding in connection with first party property policies. We hope you find our case summaries informative and, as always, we welcome any comments, questions or the opportunity to elaborate on any coverage question you or your group may have.